Storyville presents Jackie and Roy. Burt Goldblatt design. (1955)

It’s hard to go wrong with the jazz vocals of husband and wife team Jackie & Roy. After joining forces in 1946, they joined Charlie Ventura a couple years later. Shortly after leaving Ventura in June 1949, they were married and worked together on a regular basis for the next fifty years. Jackie and Roy had their own television show in Chicago in the fifties, worked in Las Vegas during 1957-1960, and settled in New York in 1963. Working in a mode that was deeply informed by bop, Jackie and Roy hit vocal lines that only the hippest of the fifties singers could match. Some cuts on this Storyville 10″ feature scatting, others vocalese, and still others just great straight-up readings of the lyrics. The small combo features Roy on piano, Barry Galbraith on guitar, Bill Crow on bass, and Joe Morello on drums. Titles include “Slowly”, “Thou Swell”, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”, “Cheerful Little Earful”, “Hook Line & Sinker”, and “Yesterdays”.

Having raided and fully absorbed my step-father’s one cabinet of records as a kid, I was familiar with a couple Jackie and Roy records growing up. Listening to songs like “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most,” “Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block” and “You Smell So Good” didn’t win me any friends and fewer dates.

(11 votes, average: 4.18 out of 5)

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